Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit Share New Single ‘Cumberland Gap’

The new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit album was said to focus on rock and from the first two tastes we’ve had of the LP, it seems the reports are true. Isbell and his band had previously released “Hope The High Road” off The Nashville Sound, which is due on June 16 via Southeastern Records/Thirty Tigers. Today, the group has issued the album’s second hard rocking single, “Cumberland Gap.”

The Nashville Sound is the first true Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit LP since 2011’s Here We Rest. Isbell’s band features keyboardist Derry deBorja, drummer Chad Gamble, bassist Jimbo Hart, fiddler/vocalist Amanda Shires and guitarist Sadler Vaden. The 10-track effort was produced by Dave Cobb and recorded at Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A. Cobb had previously been behind the board on Jason’s recent LP’s Southeastern and Something More Than Free.

“This song is about working class desperation, really,” Isbell said about “Cumberland Gap” and added, “It was written as a tribute to the children of the coal mining regions.” Noisey premiered the track with writer Annalise Domenighini stating, “If you’ve ever spent some of your life in an impoverished and under-supported area that relies on the land to provide economic safety, or just simply felt trapped by your circumstances—economic, racial, gendered—’Cumberland Gap’ will ring true for you, because the Cumberland Gap, a real place, can also be your own mind, or your job, or whatever ails you at the moment. That’s what makes Isbell’s writing so wonderful to listen to at this juncture in our lives.”

Listen to Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit’s “Cumberland Gap”:

Watch the previously released lyric video for “Hope The High Road”:

The Nashville Sound Tracklist

1. Last of My Kind
2. Cumberland Gap
3. Tupelo
4. White Man’s World
5. If We Were Vampires
6. Anxiety
7. Molotov
8. Chaos and Clothes
9. Hope the High Road
10. Something to Love